To be fair to those people, they also don’t think you need your plywood and mulch because you should live in a nice little apartment with a surely altruistic landlord who takes care of every need that the plywood and mulch could satisfy.
Someone who does home improvements probably own a house. Shouldn't they be able to, you know, buy an apartment, if "the mising middle" apartments were available in the US and not banned by a million laws (freedom! :-) ).